Category Archives: Fun Facts

This is Your Brain on Fresh Air

If you thought it was good to go outside to get some fresh air, there may be more to it than that. A new study claims that going outdoors actually changes the way your brain works, and not necessarily in a good way.  According to Kyle Mathewson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University

Read More

Name Your Poison

Today I want to talk about one of the burning questions of our time.  (And no, it’s not why we call it “cargo” when it goes by ship and “shipment” when it goes by car.) What is the difference between poison and venom? There actually is a difference.  Basically, venom is injected and poison can

Read More

What Are The Best Jobs?

If you’re fortunate enough to be young and just starting out, or are looking for a new career, you may want to read “The 50 Best Jobs in America — And How Much They Pay” by Paul Schrodt.  Schrodt’s source is the job site Glassdoor’s fourth annual report on this country’s best jobs.  Glassdoor used

Read More

The End of Chocolate?

Catches up on the news, I found something very disturbing January 2, 2018 on the Food and Wine website. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are predicting the source of chocolate, the cacao plant, is likely to go extinct, perhaps as early as 2050. The culprit is global warming.  Most of the

Read More

Ringing in the New Year With New Life

New years are always a time for renewal, so I thought it appropriate to pass along some scientific news — “In 2017, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences, along with several dozen international collaborators, added 85 new plant and animal species to Earth’s tree of life, including 16 flowering plants, three scorpions, 10 sharks,

Read More

Are Dogs Smarter Than Cats?

Here is a good way to start an argument (not that we need any more reasons) — which is smarter, dogs or cats? I don’t own any pets; I take responsibility to animals pretty seriously, so I don’t have any strong opinions.  But there is a new study claiming that dogs have the edge in

Read More

Just For Fun — Santa the Criminal

A headline in the December 25, 2017 “The Daily Dose” from Ozy.com brought me up short — “How Many Crimes Would Santa Be Guilty Of If He Were Real?”  (This piece reminded me of the Pixar animated feature The Incredibles, where superheroes had to go undercover due to the collateral damage their good deeds were

Read More

How To Live To Be 100?

Everyone wants a nice long life — I’m planning on 80 myself — but the way technology is advancing, perhaps I’m setting my sights too low.  Is living to be 100 a realistic goal? A recent study published in International Psychogeriatrics has explored what it takes to make it to the century mark.  Researchers visited

Read More